Become a Fellow

For 2019-20, the Center for Cultural Analysis will sponsor five fellowships for Rutgers faculty, five fellowships for Rutgers graduate students, and two Postdoctoral Associate positions for external scholars.

Faculty fellows will receive funding for a course release from their home departments, generally up to $5000. Graduate fellows will receive a $23,000 stipend, up to three credits in tuition remission, and health benefits (through the Graduate School), but they may not hold any other teaching positions, long-term fellowships, or administrative appointments during their CCA year. Postdoctoral Associates will receive a $45,000 salary, health benefits, and a private office in the new Rutgers Academic Building on the College Avenue campus. During the course of the academic year, Postdoctoral Associates teach one undergraduate course in a relevant Department within SAS, which is arranged through the CCA. Since the CCA Postdoctoral Associate position is considered a residential appointment, candidates must agree to establish residency within a forty mile radius of the New Brunswick campus during the duration of their appointment.

All seminar participants will have access to the CCA’s resources and will be expected to participate in and to present their work during CCA seminars, which meet regularly throughout the academic year.

2019-2020 Seminar: The University and Its Public Worlds: Arts, Languages, Environments

Seminar leaders: Jorge Marcone and Henry S. Turner

What is a university, today, and what is the relationship between the university and its publics, especially in a moment of unprecedented globalization in university identity and university activity? This seminar begins with the premise that we no longer know exactly what a university is, that we are losing sight of what makes universities important to public life, and that the very idea of the “public” itself is changing in ways that threaten to make the traditional university irrelevant. Our aim will be to undertake a full-scale assessment of the university as a unique institution in contemporary global life through a comparative study among select North American, Latin American, European, African, Middle Eastern, and Asian examples. Rather than approaching the university as one institution among many that make up a public sphere, we propose to invert the topology of the phrase “public university,” adopting the view that the public is not to be found “outside” the university but rather inside it: in its members, its policies and procedures, in its many activities and the many sites it touches. For the public university turns out to be in many more places than we usually imagine, from classrooms to courtrooms, farms and field-stations, laboratories and libraries, prisons and publishing houses. Setting the public “inside” the university, in other words, allows us to reassess the unusual shape not only of the public but of the modern research university itself, to examine how it has changed over the last centuries, and what challenges it faces in the 21st. Among these challenges, we propose, is a view that seeks to oppose the “public” and the “university” to one another, or to dissever them so that the university appears irrelevant to public concerns. What implicit contracts have determined the university’s relationship to its national populations? How are these contracts changing and what new paths forward can we imagine? What effects do these changes have on who joins the university community in the first place, and on their divergent experiences, via their race, gender, ability, class position, language capacity, or legal status? For there are no “worlds” without diversity, difference, and the forces that alienate some subjects from those worlds. In short, we aim to identify the many values that determine the very idea of a university, including above all the values inherent in a public life founded on both diversity and equality.

The seminar, led by Jorge Marcone and Henry S. Turner, will meet approximately once every two weeks for three hours on Wednesday afternoons over the course of the 2019-20 academic year. We will read and discuss scholarship related to our topic, and members will circulate and present work-in-progress. In addition, distinguished guests will visit the seminar to discuss current projects and share insights and expertise.

Internal Fellowships

Completed application packets are due to Department Chairs and Graduate Directors by November 28, 2018. Endorsed applications must be forwarded to the CCA by December 7, 2018.

For ease of submission, each complete, endorsed application packet can be sent as a single PDF file to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

External Awards

In 2019-20, the CCA will sponsor two external Postdoctoral Associates associated with our yearly seminar. Postdoctoral Associates will receive a $45,000 salary, health benefits, and a private office in the Rutgers Academic Building on the College Avenue campus. During the course of the academic year, Postdoctoral Associates will attend the seminar, present their own work, organize a symposium, and teach one undergraduate course in a relevant department within the School of Arts and Sciences, which is arranged through the CCA. Since the CCA Postdoctoral Associate position is considered a residential appointment, candidates must agree to establish residency within a forty mile radius of the New Brunswick campus during the 2019-20 academic year.

Please submit a cover letter, CV, a 250-400 word abstract of your research project, a research statement (no more than 4 single-spaced pages), and a detailed proposal for an advanced undergraduate course that you would like to teach. Three confidential letters of recommendation must be uploaded by your referees.

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